The KCA team recently visited the Bomu Medical Centre, based on the outskirts of Mombasa, Kenya. Mombasa is a small town on the East African seaboard, which operates largely as a trading center for much of the African continent.
Bomu Medical Centre is putting life back into communities that have been devastated by the AIDS pandemic. Bomu specializes in providing treatment and surrounding care to the poor affected and infected with HIV. When Keep A Child Alive started funding Bomu, they were treating 157 patients on ARV’s. Today, the hospital receives more than 250 new patients every month and currently has 1500 children on treatment. In the last two years, Bomu has treated 10,000 patients for HIV infection!
Click here to see Bomu’s warm welcome to our KCA team’s arrival:These highly energized women are patients of ours that first came to Bomu on the brink of death. Since they began receiving treatment, they have become positive role models in their community, working to help change the face of AIDS.
All of these women are valuable players in Bomu’s new community outreach program that gets people talking about AIDS in an effort to break down the stigma that surrounds the disease. They are also working with the HIV-positive children in their community to ensure that they continue to receive the medication they need on a regular basis.
Sakia Mohamed is a Community Health Worker at Bomu. Click here to hear more from Sakia:
01:03:04 Most of the clients that we have, they are below poverty level. And they live in a slum, at the average of 36,000 people. And they are really poor. They cannot take their medicine on an empty stomach. So, what we do, sometimes we assist them or we help them. We take their cards, get the medicine for them, and give it to them. But you cannot do that all the time. Because they cannot get transport, or they cannot afford even half a dollar in a day. And most of them are mothers, with kids. Some mothers have 3-4 kids who are positive. 01:06:22 That's why you find, most of the people will not come forward to be tested. They are scared. And that is stigma and discrimination. And some of them have accepted that they are HIV positive, but there is discrimination and stigma. 01:06:50 And HIV does not kill, stigma kills. Because nobody will take care of you, nobody will protect you, will talk to you. You will always eat by yourself. You will always sit at the corner on your own. You don't have anybody to talk to. Nobody is there, nobody is interested. So this is why, most of the African community, this is what is happening in between them. 01:14:02 Bomu is a beautiful clinic. Bomu is doing a lot. Bomu is helping a lot of people. Bomu is helping a lot of men, women, just name it! Bomu is doing a lot with Keep a Child Alive. So, whoever is there, please assist Keep a Child Alive. Please, please, I beg you.Bomu continues to expand to address the growing need for treatment in its community. Dr. Zahir Alavi is the Medical Director at Bomu. According to Dr. Alavi, the HIV prevalence rate in the area has risen from 5.9% to 8% within the last year. The hospital is currently undergoing construction to accommodate more patients.
Click here to hear more from Dr. Alavi:19:30 So it began as a very small project, but over time, because of the scale of the problem, it's really really blossomed into a full institution that now provides outpatient facilities to those infected. And especially from the slum areas – as you may see when you go around Bomu – surrounded by a lot of slums, and all the poor that live here, have absolutely no other way of getting assistance towards their treatment of the HIV infection. Even though the government and institutions are there, and they have programs that are providing these services, they're just overwhelmed. There are not enough institutions, there are not enough doctors, there are not enough health care providers, and there are not enough drugs. 23:50 We just have to get up more clinics, we just have to get in more labs, and more support facilities so that these patients can get the right care, can get the right access, and can get all the drugs and all the tests that are required with keeping these people on this kind of care. This is the way we are, this is the help we need.
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